Sitrep: Rediscovering Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, the vorcha way

Toby finally finds his niche.

I, like you, was surprised by how good Mass Effect 3’s multi turned out to be. I played it a lot, became hopelessly addicted. But while hopelessly addicted, one thing bothered me (apart from the almost heinous, gambling-like commercialisation of its upgrade packs. I maintain to this day you’ll always get better stuff if you actually pay for them with real mo-ney-neys): I could never find my niche on the battlefield.

I’d regularly come in third or even shameful sub-bronze on the scoreboard. What le hell, I thought. I’m hurting stuff. I’m stealing that guy’s kills. What gives? Nothing was really built for my playstyle. Soldiers were too hands-off, Engineers too fiddly. I like to get my hands dirty, but that there Drellguard… bit squishy for my care-factor, regularly bottoming out at negative one million. The fact I’d never managed to score any decent weapons helped a lot.

This was before all the freebie updates. Recently I hooked back into ME3 to play me some Leviathan, which Tim said was good in between trolling all of Twitter with Brenn. I got instantly waylaid by all the new guys in the multi. After receiving about a hundred Spec Ops packs (I’m watching you, EA) I finally chanced upon a raw recruit that sounded, in theory, really not my thing: the Vorcha Sentinel.

“Sentinel,” I cried, spitting everywhere. “Those guys suck.” And it didn’t make much sense. Vorchas with tech armour, I mean what. So I got curious and started hitting the field with this guy. Turns out “Sentinel” is a real misnomer here. He’s anything but. He’s actually just some criminally insane guy with an oversize pack of matches.

I love to get in close and beat people in just about every game I can, and this Mass Effect Batman, that’s what he’s about. I have found my niche. It’s awesome: the Ventinel’s “tech armour” actually just fills him with adamantium rage and whenever he kills anything, it starts stacking (max three times, I think). His shields are for crap, but he’s got a long-ass health bar and it just keeps chargin’ and rechargin’ the more guts are splatted.

It also makes him really quick and even moar powerful. I don’t even fire a shot with this maniac and I love it. I give him the crappest, lightest gun I can and just streak past all those poor fools trying to bring down a mob with their guns and start slashing. Spec’d like Wolverine, your heavy melee kills grunts in one go and also cover a decent amount of ground before connecting, meaning you can make some really unlikely pounces that eventuate in grim vivisection.

He can even go hoof-to-hoof with Brutes and take them down real quick if you’re canny with the Vorch-dodge (best in the game, maybe, though Drell’s are light on the feet too) – and, most joyously, his flamethrower. It eats armour like Cannibals eat each other and will make those Cerberus bitches dance. I don’t even have grenades on this build. He is just a complete psychopath with intestines permanently stuck to the ends of his bad manicure. I think it’s love – and the top of the scoreboard (okay second place, but that comes right after first).

Those bad boys are a bit slow for me. I love ‘em in theory, but any class that moves at the speed of poo just kills me. I gave up on my beloved turians for this reason and then discovered the turian infiltrator. JET PACK ARGH YEAAAH

I play the shit out of a Vorcha. Vorcha and Krogan actually go really well together, the Krogan is a huge tank (especially the vanguard, who can recharge their barrier over and over) and the Vorcha can rack up amazing damage jumping in and out.

They are, however, fast. Very fast. Apparently, with a high speed mod, and using diagonal running rather than straight directional, the enemy -cannot- hit you with ranged attacks. You just move too fast for the trajectories.

I play all the classes. I tend to win with whatever I use. I used to think that I was good at the game.

And then someone told me a video of an N7 Fury soloing a Platinum game in 24 minutes.

Meh! Indra, Schmindra. My N7 Destroyer Solider (who has something like 3000 shields when fully stocked) is a one man annihilation monster when armed with anything that remotely even -resembles- a firearm.

I tend to enjoy the Argus, Revenant, Falcon or Mattock with him. The amount of fire, the accuracy of it and above all the DAMAGE he gets for the bonuses of that armour are beyond obscene.

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